Sculpted animals, in realistic or fantastic form, were a common
feature of Mesopotamian art. In the world's earliest settlements
these figures negotiated the relationship between humans and gods.

According to Mesopotamian myth, humans were created by the gods as
their servants but--as revealed in the so-called Epic of Atrahasis,
inscribed on clay tablets from the period 1900-1600 BC (Fig. 1)--they
soon multiplied and their noise began to disturb the sleep of the
supreme god Enlil. He sent diseases and a drought to reduce their
number, but eventually decided to destroy humanity by sending a flood.
Recognising the folly of such an act, the wise god Enki told his servant
Atrahasis to dismantle his house and build a boat. Atrahasis put aboard
his family along with birds and, in a frustratingly broken part of the
tablet, possibly domesticated and wild animals. The flood 'roared
like a bull', but Atrahasis survived to make the gods an offering,
after which Enlil introduced various forms of infertility to keep
overpopulation in check. (1)

The story was clearly a way of explaining some of the major
challenges of life on the floodplains of Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).
Of course, it also has parallels with the account of Noah's flood
in the Hebrew Bible that has inspired countless artists from late
antiquity onwards to portray animals entering the ark two-by-two.
Animals hardly figure in the Mesopotamian text, but it is clear from the
extraordinary art that survives from the region that they played a
significant role in the often tricky relationships between the
inhabitants and their gods.

Although representations of animals in paint and small-scale
sculpture occur as early 40,000 BC, it is during the Neolithic period,
from around 10,000 BC, at places like Gobekli Tepe in south-eastern
Turkey, that carved animals in very high relief are associated with
monumental architecture intended to create sacred spaces. This was the
era in which the transition from hunting to herding and permanent
agricultural villages took place. The rich symbolism of wild creatures,
which had probably long been linked with the supernatural world, now
incorporated domesticated animals; these are represented in fragile wall
paintings and moulded reliefs at villages such as Catalhoyuk.

By around 4500 BC stone stamp seals engraved with abstract designs
of animals were being impressed on lumps of wet clay or plaster; these
were placed on the fastening of baskets, ceramics, sacks, and storeroom
doors to define individual property and to secure, perhaps magically
through the power of the animals depicted, the containers and rooms
against unauthorised opening. More intriguingly, it is in these same
villages within the foothills and passes of the Zagros Mountains, which
divide the lowlands of Mesopotamia from the high plateau of Iran, that
stamp seals were engraved with some of the earliest known
representations of a supernatural figure: a being that combines a human
body and the head of an animal with long, curved ibex horns. The
relationship between humans and animals at a supernatural level had
become entwined in art; originating in the mountains of Iran, this
tradition would have a profound influence on Mesopotamian beliefs and
representation for thousands of years.

It is, however, the centuries around 3300 BC that are the starting
point for an exhibition exploring Mesopotamian sculpted animals at the
Morgan Library and Museum (26 May-27 August). The world's earliest
states and cities emerged in this period and with them some of the most
accomplished representations of animals that have survived from the
ancient world. In the far south of Mesopotamia, at the head of the
Persian Gulf, lay the city of Uruk, which by this date was home to tens
of thousands of people, sustained by fields of grain and vast herds of
cattle and flocks of sheep. Here mud-brick temple buildings were
constructed on a monumental scale (one had a floor plan comparable in
size to that of the Parthenon built in Athens some three millennia
later). Associated with this architecture were sculptures of animals in
both clay and stone, representing cattle and sheep, and the lions that
threatened them. The skill to imitate the natural form of living animals
is very evident in many of the carvings, not least in a remarkable head
of a ewe (Fig. 2). Carved from sandstone, the sculptor's mastery of
the medium allowed them to capture the vitality of the animal with her
floppy ears standing free of the head. Although this piece is without
provenance, it is very similar to excavated examples found in the
so-called Sammelfund hoard at Uruk, which may have been a range of
stores for temple equipment. The rooms contained objects in the form of
animals and many of the stone figurines, which are often inlaid with
precious stones and metals from the highlands of Iran or further afield,
were probably intended as votive offerings.

This same era saw the development of the cylinder seal. Although
these are perhaps the most characteristic objects from Mesopotamia, the
earliest attested example comes in fact from Susa in south-west Iran.
The engraved stone cylinders were impressed into clay by rolling, but
their shape provided a greater surface area than earlier stamp seals,
which allowed the carver to play with patterns as well as complex
narratives. The first cylinder seals show rows of animals such as fish
and cattle, as well as human workers, and they may have been used by
administrators responsible for different 'departments' of
large agricultural estates, some of which almost certainly belonged to
temples. Indeed, a number of seals appear to show temple flocks and
herds, including a fine example carved from serpentine, with a ewe and
ram flanking a plant (Fig. 3). Between the rumps of the animals is a
pole with a loop and a streamer at the top. This is the symbol of
Inanna, the patron goddess of Uruk and a powerful deity associated with
abundance and sexuality. Although the animals face each other on the
seal, the composition might be intended as an open-ended, infinitely
repeating design. When the seal is rolled, the symbol of Inanna is
repeated so that it appears to frame the two sheep and, given sufficient
clay, the animals could be multiplied as would be befitting a goddess of
procreation and plenty.

Other seals from the late fourth millennium BC evoke a supernatural
realm through representations of fantastic creatures such as bird-headed
lions and heraldically composed snake-necked felines. The latter are
known from seal impressions not only at Uruk and Susa, but also at sites
in Syria and on elite objects associated with kingship in Egypt where
their exotic, prestigious values lent them an otherworldly status and
power. These images had presumably been transmitted to the Nile Valley
through portable cylinder seals or their impressions on imports. Like
the earlier horned figure on stamp seals, these beings violate basic
expectations of the natural world and as a result they may have been
more easily memorised and transmitted without the need for language. (2)
In societies focussed on trade routes, such as those along the foothills
of the Zagros range and within the mountain passes, composite figures
may have played a crucial role in negotiating the risk and uncertainty
posed by cultural, social, and political differences.

Although movements of people reoriented long-distance trade routes
around 3000 BC, Uruk and other cities of southern Mesopotamia (Sumer)
continued to flourish and there was much continuity in their art. To the
east, in Susa and across Iran, however, new ideas built on ancient
highland traditions came to the fore. An emphasis on animals with
elaborate horns emerged; some cylinder seals show them standing in
parallel rows where the lower animals are depicted larger than those
above, an arrangement that may indicate perspective. (3) Other horned
animals are shown flanking a tree emerging from a mountain. These images
are typical of seals from the so-called Proto-Elamite period of Iran
(around 3100-2900 BC) when decorum appears to have required the
avoidance of representations of humans, a significant feature that
distinguishes them from the seal designs of Sumer. Instead it is animals
who assume poses more appropriate to humans, a concept that is also
found in a number of extraordinary stone and metal sculptures. (4) One
of the most outstanding is a silver kneeling bull (Fig. 4). It is formed
from many pieces of metal, which have been fused together to represent
an animal wearing a garment patterned with an interlocking striped
design and offering a spouted vessel. The haunches and legs of a bull
replace the shoulders, arms and even the legs of a human. The kneeling
pose is known from other Proto-Elamite sculptures as well as cylinder
seals where lions, bulls, bears, and ibex are shown paddling coracles,
playing games, banqueting, or acting as scribes (writing on clay tablets
had been developed in both Mesopotamia --the forerunner of
cuneiform--and Proto-Elamite Iran). The bull contains a number of small
pebbles, which may suggest that he served as a rattle, perhaps for
ritual use.

The combination of distinct architecture, ceramics, and writing
that characterises the Proto-Elamite period disappears at the start of
the third millennium BC, but some of the traditions in representation
appear to be maintained in the western Zagros. It becomes apparent in
images on seals found at sites in the Diyala river valley, east of
modern Baghdad and at one end of an important east-west route across the
mountains. Here appears a bison-man, a creature standing upright on
bison's legs with a human torso, arms and face, with bison's
ears, mane and horns. Early depictions of human-faced bison on seals and
their impressions from Sumer also show them in a recumbent pose on
either side of a mountain from which sprouts branching vegetation that
evokes an earlier Proto-Elamite tradition (Fig. 5). These composite
creatures are often associated with a lion-headed bird (called Anzu or
Imdugud in cuneiform documents) which can be shown with closed wings,
its body in profile but head lowered and viewed as if from above, and
perched on the back of the human-faced bison that it bites. The scene
has been interpreted as representing the thunder clouds (symbolised by
Anzu) that occasionally obscured the eastern Zagros Mountains (the
human-faced bison) when viewed from the lowlands. (5) An interest in
pictorial depth, suggested by the use of perspective in Proto-Elamite
seal imagery, is implied by the use of registers, separating the
natural, animal world of Sumer in the bottom from distant, mythological
realms at the top.

This relationship between natural and supernatural animal worlds is
demonstrated by the remarkable objects uncovered in the Royal Cemetery
at Ur, the centre of a powerful Sumerian city-state at the head of the
Persian Gulf around 2500-2400 BC. (6) Among the masterpieces is a pair
of sculptures in the form of a male goat rearing on its hind legs up
against a flowering plant (Fig. 6). Each of the sponsors of the
excavations at Ur--the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania
Museum--received a goat. The figures were not, however, designed as
separate freestanding sculptures but rather as pieces of applied art;
the gold covered cylinder projecting from the goat's neck possibly
supported with its partner a small tray. The goat's horns, beard,
eyebrows, pupils, forelocks, and the fleece of the shoulders and chest
are made from blue lapis lazuli, a stone imported from Afghanistan, far
to the east. The underside of the body is made of silver, possibly
originating from sources in the region of modern Turkey or Iran while
the remainder of the body fleece is formed of shell, perhaps from the
Persian Gulf. Iran may have supplied the gold that covers the
goat's face and legs, as well as the plant. The animal embodies the
trading connections that crossed the ancient world and the exotic
materials demanded and acquired by the wealthy elite of the Sumerian
city states. Yet the imagery also embraces the divine world since the
stylised plant has produced five buds and three flowers or rosettes that
are understood as symbols of the goddess Inanna. The active male goat
and the passive plant encapsulates the fertility and abundance provided
by the gods.

Many of the objects from the Royal Cemetery are fashioned from
materials from the mountains of Iran and further east. For the Sumerians
this direction could be described by the word kur (earth/mountains) that
designated both a foreign land and the netherworld. Entrances to the
netherworld were thought to be within the mountains and it may be that
the objects in the tombs were intended to accompany the dead on that
eastern journey or be presented as gifts when they arrived. In this way,
the spirits of the dead would be returning the stones and metals to the
place where they originated in reality, but now in a supernatural realm.
But how was the netherworld imagined in Sumer? One vision appears on a
shell plaque decorating the front of a large lyre from the cemetery
(Fig. 7). In the top register a nude belted hero holds two human-faced
bison. If the bison stand for the eastern mountains, then the hero may
be the gatekeeper who, as a later Sumerian myth describes, confronts
Inanna when she attempts to visit the underworld. In the panels below
the hero the scenes depict a banquet, but this is an 'other
world' in which animals replace humans as servants and musicians.
In the lowest register appears a scorpion-man, a creature associated
with distant, mysterious lands. Thus the eastern mountains and the
Iranian conceit of animals acting as humans are brought together to
represent a distant cosmic realm.

Looking at Mesopotamian sculptural works from about 3300-2250 BC
reveals an intimate link between Sumerian gods and the animals that
symbolised and embodied their powers. Dedications of animals in temples,
either as living sacrifices or finely crafted images, were believed to
ensure divine support in maintaining the fertility of the land and
protection from the dangers of the wilderness beyond. But this was only
one aspect of the complex relationship between humans, gods and animals.
To the east of Sumer, the societies of Iran supplied metals, exotic
stones, and strong timber not available in the lowlands and this gave
them economic and political, and also cultural influence. Imagery of
horned animals, composite creatures, and animals acting as humans, which
were at home in the mountains, was fundamental in shaping Sumerian
approaches to the divine and the creation of associated art. We
therefore cannot understand the plains of ancient Mesopotamia without
considering the influence of the highlands, a notion that continues to
be relevant in the modern relationships between Iraq and Iran.

Paul Collins is the Curator for Ancient Near East at the Ashmolean
Museum, University of Oxford.

'Noah's Beasts: Sculpted Animals from Ancient
Mesopotamia' is at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, from
26 May-27 August. For more details, go to www.themorgan.org.

(1.) For a translation of the Epic of Atrahasis, see Stephanie
Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and
Others, Oxford, 2000, pp. 1-38.

(2.) David Wengrow, The Origins of Monsters: Image and Cognition in
the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Princeton, 2013.

(5.) Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness: A History of
Mesopotamian Religion, New Haven, 1978, pp. 128-29.

(6.) For an art-historical analysis of some of the objects from the
Royal Cemetery, see Donald P. Hansen, 'Art of the Royal Tombs of
Ur: A Brief Interpretation', in Richard L. Zettler and Lee Home
(eds.), Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur, Philadelphia, 1998, pp.
43-63.

Caption: 7. Inlay of the 'Great Lyre' from the Royal
Cemetery of Ur, c. 2500-2400 BC, Sumerian, shell and bitumen, 31.5x
11cm. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,
Philadelphia

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